Experiment, evolve new reforms in governance: Jitendra Singh to bureaucrats

New Delhi: Bureaucrats should constantly experiment and evolve new reforms to do away with obsolete laws and make governance easy and people-friendly, Union Minister Jitendra Singh said here today.

Union Minister Jitendra Singh

Speaking at induction training programme for newly inducted IAS officers, Singh said the government is committed to provide optimum opportunity to every bureaucrat to perform to the best of his ability and potential and without intimidation.

“At the same time, the bureaucrats will also be expected to constantly experiment and evolve new reforms which can do away with obsolete rules and make the governance easy and people-friendly,” he said.

In this context, the Minister also cited Narendra Modi government’s revolutionary decision to do away with the practice of getting certificates attested and instead introduced the self-attested certification.

He was addressing a group of IAS officers who have been appointed as Assistant Secretaries in different ministries here as part of a first-of-its-kind initiative by the Union government to groom them at the Centre before they move out to their respective state cadres.

Singh, Minister of State in Prime Minister’s Office, said a pan-India vision in governance not only helps the officer deliver better but also enables him to serve with equal utility in any part of this vast country.

The task gets further compounded because of the fact that 2015 India is confronted with new challenges of a different nature and with the avowed goal of emerging as a global power in the next few years, he said.

To that extent, this could perhaps be described as one of the best times for a bureaucrat to serve when India is destined to rise to the top of the world and the bureaucrats of the next generation are going to be important players and active participants in the making of new history, Singh said.

He said the Indian Administrative Service has come a long way since the times it was adopted as a legacy of erstwhile Indian Civil Services even though that comparison is unequal and unfair because the responsibilities of an Indian bureaucrat are much more complex and diverse compared to his counterpart in any other part of the world.

“Over the years the magnitude of responsibilities has increased and added to this is the high level of accountability with constant media and public scrutiny,” the Minister said.